Monday, August 16, 2010

Spokane River ~ Closed for Remodeling?

Yes, you read that right. We drove into the city this afternoon to visit Riverfront Park and enjoy the Spokane River Falls in the heart of Spokane. It is such a lovely downtown as we remembered it when we were here years ago. Today, this is what we saw...

...a construction site where a main channel of the river normally flows.

By Googling, I found this article with information about the project:

Instead of water in the channels people will see cranes, sandbags and crews working to figure out how to make the river more beautiful and natural looking.

Avista controls some of the dams that feed into the river and creating the roaring falls people in Spokane love to watch but right now the company is drying out the north and middle channels in order to do some improvements.

“I think the intent is to make it a more visually appealing experience so right now were just trying to see if we can do something to do that,” Scarlett explained.

Over the next few weeks avista crews will be working on the river, trying to make the flows prettier. The plan, Scarlett says, is to place large sandbags in different locations along the river and then putting water in to see how the flow looks.

Avista’s goal is to create a more natural looking river.

Avista is the local utility company and the information above was part of a TV newscast on August 13th. I confess to being amused at the thought of "creating a more natural looking river"...whatever!